Kallpod announced 2018 as a groundbreaking year that outmatched the year’s expectations, with its notable achievements and partnerships ushering in a vast array of opportunities for 2019, especially for the startup’s recent launch of its next-generation platform, Kallpod Pro.

Co-founded in 2014 by CEO Gabriel Weisz and COO Steven Barrow Barlow, Kallpod was created to help clients facilitate seamless, real-time engagement between guests, service staff and internal teams, using technology to enhance and increase the amount and quality of human interaction within hospitality settings. In four years, Kallpod expanded its footprint to more than 1,000 restaurants, amphitheaters, stadiums and hotels in North America, through partnerships with Live Nation, HMS Host, Aramark and Marriott, among others.

In 2018, Kallpod broke into the quick-service segment with a new partnership with Chick-fil-A restaurants in Texas, one of which has the second highest revenue and traffic in the entire Chick-fil-A system. With Kallpod installed on dining tables, franchisees gained a 500 percent upsurge in reorder revenues and significantly higher guest services scores due to additional ordering at the table.

“2018 was a landmark year for our company,” Weisz said. “We expanded our technology into new industries and saw major success from it. In the [quick-serve] space specifically and through our partnership with Chick-fil-A, we realized that we could help restaurants become more efficient and customer-centric simply by providing a second order occasion that did not previously exist. In 2019, we are focused on further expanding in the [quick-serve] space and anticipate Kallpod Pro to fuel our growth and drive more partnerships across more verticals.”

To sustain this massive growth and momentum, Weisz and Barlow doubled the Kallpod team to fully support the fast-growing, increasingly horizontal client base and the launch of its second-generation technology, Kallpod Pro. The Kallpod Pro platform was designed to build upon the functionality of the existing Kallpod technology, providing a cloud-based Dashboard and incorporating NFC and Bluetooth into the tabletop device. The new NFC feature adds another layer of customer engagement, as guests are no longer limited to just three Kallpod buttons but are free to use virtual buttons on their smartphone which can facilitate pay-at-table, ordering, guest feedback, website/app integration, and more. Beyond improving the guest-to-staff connection, Kallpod Pro integrates a new communication feature that allows staff to directly send messages to the smartwatches of individual staff or internal teams, using unique or pre-set messages. In addition, Kallpod Pro’s Data Dashboard provides a suite of operational data to improve efficiencies within a single venue or across multiple venues. The Dashboard delivers analytics reports in real-time, detailing KPIs such as best performing staff members, day-part trends and so on.

“Our partners love Kallpod Pro because it helps them identify exactly where improvements need to be made through the data reports, including requests completed by specific staff members or calls answered per hour in the restaurant,” Barlow says. “We are ultimately looking to help operators enhance their service and table turns, as well as increase their throughput, revenue per square foot and labor efficiency.”